How to Fake a Shot in Women's Lacrosse

Learn how to fake a shot from coaches at Gameday Lacrosse in this Howcast video.

Transcript

Hi Katie Chrest-Irvey. I'm an assistant lacrosse coach at Columbia University. This is Liz Kittlemen-Jackson[?]. She is the head coach at Columbia, and Caitlin Jackson with Game Day lacrosse, and I am going to teach you how to fake a shot today.

So this is a very useful skill and something that makes an attacker or someone who's going to shoot the ball a really effective shooter. The ability to kind of make the goalie get off of her line and kind of bite on a fake allows you to have more space to put the ball when you're going to shoot.

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So faking is actually less about your stick than it is about your body. So what I mean by that is essentially what you want to do is you want to mimic all the actions that you would do if you were actually going to shot the ball. So if I were going to shoot the ball, I would turn my hips, turn my shoulders, and my stick would come through this like this. So I'm going to move my body in the motion that I would if I were shooting. I might even use my head to kind of throw that goalie off. So as I'm going, or as you can see these guys doing, they're going to rotate their shoulders around. They're going to act like they're actually throwing the ball, and then they're going to quickly get their stick back into position to take that shot.

So one thing that they're not doing is they're not bringing their stick out in front of them because if they bring their stick all the way around in front of them, the goalie then has this much time to get back into position. As you bring your stick back, she has time to get back into position to block that shot.

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Another way to fake a shot is by changing your level. And so if you watch Caitlin, one thing she might do is drop her stick down low, making the goalie think that she's just going to put it in on the lower part of the cage. Then she's going to bring her shoulders back up and her hands back up and take that overhand shot. So she might fake a side arm shot, but come back over the top for an overhand shot. Likewise, she can fake high and then come back and roll it past that goalie. So if she were to take the ball, fake like she was going to go high, and then around that goalie, put it back in the goal. Good.